One Flew East
by Tyraa Rane
Summary: What happens when one of the most dangerous psychic terrorists in history breaks free of his cell? Why, he goes to even the score with those who put him there in the first place. Set six years after the game. SashaxMilla, RazxLili. Ch. 3 is up!
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **I don't work for DoubleFine, I don't own Psychonauts, and furthermore, I'm a poor college student. Suing me would probably be a waste of time and energy.

**A/N: **This fic does borrow a bit from one of my other Psychonauts fics, "Two to Tango," namely in the form of one of its characters, Nicholas Harper. However, aside from that, they don't fall within the same timeline and aren't in any way related to one another. Got it? There'll be a quiz later.

Special thanks to AKA, for giving this plot bunny the swift kick in the ass it needed.

* * *

"_One flew east, one flew west,  
One flew over the cuckoo's nest."  
-- Children's folk rhyme_

**One Flew East**

Lili was asleep when the phone rang. It took until the third ring to finally shake her awake, and by the time she'd gotten up and staggered down the hallway towards the nearest phone--buried under roughly fifteen tons of paperwork on the desk in her father's office--her father had gotten there first.

"'Lo? ...Kowalski, d'you have _any _idea what time it is?" He stopped, yawning. "Yeah, okay, fine. Go ahead." Stifling another yawn, Truman began absently working out all the knots in his short auburn hair. After less than a minute of listening to whatever Kowalski had to say, however, he stopped, and suddenly seemed more awake than before.

"Yeah, no--no. _Christ_, are you sure--? Damn. No, I'll be there in twenty minutes. You'd better get Agent Nein down there, too. Have the jet waiting. Yeah...thanks. Bye." He dropped the phone back into its cradle with a long and weary sigh--and only then noticed Lili, standing in the doorway and watching him with a curious, if sleepy, expression.

"Dad, what's--"

"It's nothing, sweetie," he answered quickly. "Just work stuff. You know."

Lili brushed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes to glance at the nearby clock. "At three in the morning?"

Truman shrugged, still trying to appear nonchalant. "It happens, kiddo. Now..." He squeezed past her and into his bedroom, turning on lights and rifling through dresser drawers. "I've got to head over to headquarters, and I'll probably be gone for a day or two. You'll be fine here on your own, right?"

"Yeah," she said around a yawn, "sure."

"And you should head back to bed." He jerked a thumb back in the general direction of her room, although his attention was now turned towards his closet. "Tomorrow's a school day, isn't it?"

The look Lili shot him was at best patronizing. "School let out for the summer last Friday, Dad."

"Oh. Right. Well." He kissed her quickly on the forehead, then took off down the hall, still in his pajamas, his Psychonauts uniform tossed over one shoulder and his shoes in hand. "I'll be back in a few days. Take care, Lil."

Then he was gone, down the stairs and out the door. Lili turned out the lights he'd left on in the master bedroom with a slow sigh, then shuffled back to bed.


	2. The Black Brook Incident

**Chapter One: The Black Brook Incident**

Compton Boole Psychic Penitentiary was located exactly in the middle of nowhere, upstate New York, on the shores of tiny Fern Lake. So isolated--tucked deep into the forest, its grounds surrounded by barbed wire fence on all sides--the residents of the nearest town, over two miles away, had no idea it existed. The general assumption around the area was either that the meandering little dirt road that disappeared into the forest either went nowhere at all, or went to some sort of top secret government testing facility.

So there was, therefore, no one around that early morning to pay any mind to the black SUV that veered off the interstate and onto the narrow dirt road, bouncing off into the forest. Inside the car, Sasha grimaced as they ran pell-mell over yet another pothole and he was nearly tossed into the window--again. "Agent Kowalski," he snapped, rubbing his forehead as if fighting off a headache, "refrain from rolling the car over, please."

Silence from the driver. And then, a little sullenly, "Yes, sir."

Truman looked up from the manila file folder he'd been reading for the first time since they'd landed at the nearest airport and picked up the car to take them the rest of the way. "We've got a damn serious problem, Nein."

"Obviously," he answered, his voice suddenly taking on a bit of a caustic tone. "You've organized a task force beyond the two of us and Louis here, I'd assume."

Truman tossed the file folder down on the seat, where it blended in rather nicely with the car's interior. From on top of the thick stack of papers, a photograph of a blond-haired, blue-eyed man glared up at them. "As soon as we know more about how he escaped and what exactly we're dealing with, I'll put one together. But..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "I've got the entire branch ready to mobilize--everybody out on mission's being recalled--just in case."

Sasha nodded. "Probably a wise decision."

The car hit another pothole, this time sending Sasha flying the opposite direction and causing him to knock heads with Truman.

"_Kowalski!_"

"Sorry, sir!"

* * *

"Raz? Hey, Raz!" 

A head of straight black hair popped up over the top of the bunkbed. "Yoohoo, sleepyhead..." Almost as if on cue, a telekinetic hand reached out and gave the form curled up asleep in the bed a good hard shove. "No, seriously. Wake up."

"Mmmf." Raz rolled over and burrowed deeper under the sheets. "Go away, Zeke."

"Okay." Zeke shrugged and jumped back down to the floor, where he began picking through the clothes scattered all over the tile, looking for something clean to wear. "But you're the one who wanted me to wake you up in the first place."

There was a bit of muttering from the bed which might've been, "Did not."

"I mean, hey, you wanna sleep, that's fine by me," Zeke continued, finally settling on a ripped and worn--but relatively clean--pair of jeans. "I'm not the one who's gotta be at the airport in twenty minutes."

Raz's head flew up just as Zeke was tugging on an old t-shirt that said "Harrison Farms" on the front. "_Crap_!" He leaped out of bed and into the closet, a blur of long, gangly limbs that still looked somehow out of place on his skinny, sixteen year-old frame.

Zeke snickered. "You'd better hurry it up. I was just out in the hall--they're shutting the whole place down." He turned his attention to the room's only mirror and began carefully examining his chin. "Dammit...I'm never going to grow a beard at this rate."

Raz tumbled back out of the closet, fully dressed but still fighting with his shoes. For some reason, his right foot was at odds with its corresponding shoe. He'd made it almost halfway across the room, hopping on one foot and deftly avoiding piles of laundry, before he fully processed what Zeke had said. "Wait. They're locking the academy down?"

"That's what the boss lady said," Zeke answered, referring to Isabella Fuentes, the agent currently in charge of the academy. "Don't ask me why, 'cause I've got no idea. All I know is, hey, at least my pyrokinesis class is canceled." His telekinetic hand punched the air behind him in victory. Raz just rolled his eyes, realized he'd been trying to put his shoes on the wrong feet, and promptly swapped them.

"I wonder if that means they want me over at headquarters...I should probably report in--" He tied his bootlaces and then reached for the room phone--only to have it yanked out of his reach.

"Cool it, ace." Zeke set the phone down on the nearest available clear surface, otherwise known as Raz's desk, without even glancing away from the mirror. "They'll live. Besides, I'm not gonna explain to Agent Siberia why you left him at the airport."

Raz chuckled. "Okay, okay. First Agent Siberia, _then _go find out what's going on."

"Thank _god_; we finally sorted out your priorities." Zeke shot him a cheeky grin over his shoulder, gray-blue eyes glinting mischievously. "Tell Oleander I said 'hi.'"

"Yeah, I'm sure he'll be glad to hear from some kid he's never met," Raz shot back, darting out the door and well out of range of any retorts or projectiles Zeke might have thrown back at him. Until, that was, a set of car keys appeared in the empty hallway behind him, dangling from an unseen hand.

"Forget something, ace?" Zeke called from back inside the room.

Raz, rather sheepishly, jogged back down the hall and grabbed the keys. He was starting to see the value of coffee; being this scatterbrained first thing in the morning wore thin, and fast. "I guess. Thanks."

"Yeah, just bring the truck back with a full tank this time!"

The door to their shared room slammed shut, and then Raz was alone--there were twenty other academy students living on their floor, most of whom would usually be just waking up and moving around at that hour, but per proper lockdown procedures they were all in their rooms with the doors closed and locked. Raz's footsteps echoed all the way down the hall and past the floor's lounge, where someone had left the television on.

"_And still no update on the Black Brook situation--local authorities have issued a statement, once again advising residents of the town and surrounding area to remain in their homes and report any suspicious activity to police immediately._

"_The chief of police still refuses to comment on the situation, although rumor is starting to spread of a prison break at one of the area's penitentiaries, possibly Upstate, the region's only maximum security prison. More than one inmate may be involved._

"_Also of concern are reports of an explosion two miles northeast of Black Brook. Despite reports that this may have been caused by psychic activity, local and federal authorities are all currently refusing to comment._

"_We here at News to Me will continue to keep you updated as events warrant."_

Raz turned the set off on his way down the stairs to the parking lot, shaking his head.

* * *

"God _damn_." 

Kowalski nearly slammed his fingers in the car door, he was so preoccupied with staring at Compton Boole Psychic Penitentiary--or rather, what was left of it. Most of the left wing had been turned into little more than a burnt-out husk, still smoldering in the bright, cheerful morning sunlight. Behind him, Sasha and Truman slowly got out of the car, also staring up at the building.

"Nein," Truman said, interrupting the brief silence, "do you want to explain how the _hell _this happened?"

Sasha only shrugged. "Not without closer inspection, sir, no."

"Right." He pulled out his cellphone and pressed it into Kowalski's hand--Kowalski was still staring straight ahead, slack-jawed. "Louis, do me a favor and call headquarters. The lockdown still stands, and we're going to need that task force up here as soon as possible. Tell Agent Shackley to use his own discretion in choosing team members. And ask him how many helicopters we can get up here--there's no telling how wide of a search area we're dealing with."

He nodded. "Right--right away, sir."

While Kowalski occupied himself grumbling about the area's bad cellphone reception, Truman and Sasha headed up the dirt and gravel drive to the three story building's main entrance. The twin doors were solid steel laced with precisely measured amounts of psitanium and tin, the same material used to build geodesic psycho-isolation chambers in decades past, and usually noted for its durability. The left door was hanging by a fraction of a single remaining hinge, and every strong breeze that whipped through the compound threatened to send it crashing to the ground.

"Spooky, isn't it?" Truman asked, ducking around the failing door and inside the building. Sasha, following a few paces behind, didn't bother dignifying his question with a response.

Inside the walls of Compton Pen, although half the lobby was now exposed to sunlight and open air, the atmosphere suddenly became grim and confining. Somewhere down a hallway a florescent light flickered, the only sign of life--or past life, rather--in the immediate area. Stone and glass crunched beneath their feet as they stepped deeper into the building. Halfway through the empty lobby they both stopped, exchanging glances.

"Maybe we should call for--" Sasha started, but was abruptly cut off by a door at his right tumbling off its hinges and crashing to the floor. He turned on his heel, instinctively putting himself between the doorway and Truman and falling into a defensive position.

A short, elderly man wearing a rather tattered Psychonauts uniform stumbled through the doorframe seconds later. He barely paused to take in the scene before throwing his hands up in the air. "Oh, dear--please don't shoot."

Truman pushed his way around Sasha and was quick to shake the older man's hand. "We weren't planning on it," he said, forcing a laugh. "Frederick Boole, I'm assuming."

"Right you are," Boole answered. He nodded so forcefully that his thick white hair bobbed back and forth long after the rest of him had stopped moving. "Thank you for coming so quickly, Truman. As you can see, we've...had a bit of an incident."

"Only a minor inconvenience, I'm sure," Sasha said dryly, taking another look around the ruined lobby. Truman raised an eyebrow at him, but he only continued. "I was dragged out of my bed at three this morning under the impression that one of the world's most dangerous psychic terrorists had escaped this institution. If that's correct, I'd recommend a bit more urgency." He paused briefly, then added, "Sir."

Truman only sighed. How Milla had managed to put up with Sasha for as long as she had was utterly beyond him. "Well, at least you remembered the honorifics." Then, turning his attention rather pointedly to Boole, "The details you sent to headquarters were sketchy at best. We need to know more, and we need to see the scene of the crime, as it were."

"Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," Boole muttered under his breath, still keeping a careful eye on Sasha. "Sheesh."

"Fred--can I call you Fred?" Truman flashed his trademark wide, disarming grin before the situation got any more out of hand. "Fred, the crime scene. Please."

"Oh, right. This way." Boole led them back through the doorway he'd stumbled through earlier and up a flight of stairs--the wall had been ripped out, exposing them to the open air. "To be honest," he began, side-stepping around a floorboard that looked as if it had been incinerated, "we're not entirely sure what happened. All the guards in that area of the building were killed in the explosion, along with a number of the inmates. And our only witness...well, you'll see."

Sasha put his hand on the railing, only to have it crumble to pieces. He quickly stepped away and dusted off his hands. "You don't have security cameras?"

Boole sighed. They stopped on the third floor, where he had to force the door open--it had swollen shut as if exposed to a sudden burst of heat. "The ones still in working order were all destroyed in the explosion...as was our power grid, the one working back-up generator, and our security chief. Oh, by the way, do watch your step--we've had two of our people fall through the floor already."

Truman shot Sasha a quick warning glare before he could make any more comments that could possibly be taken as snide. Sasha settled for thinking them rather loudly, instead.

"Here we are," Boole said, leading them down a wide hallway turned an uneven, charcoal black, its wood floor pitted with person-sized holes. The hall itself was relatively empty, save for a handful of prison staff members who were bagging bodies and documenting the scene. A few others were busy transferring the last of the inmates down the hall to temporary quarters in the right wing.

"Exactly..." Truman side-stepped around a chalk outline and almost fell through a hole in the floor. "Exactly how many casualties are we talking about here?"

Boole took a file from one of his staff members and handed it to Truman, who began studying it rather intently to avoid staring at the body bags scattered throughout the hall. "Sixteen--six guards, ten of the inmates. And that's not including the five we had to send to the hospital." He brought them to a stop outside the room that had been the explosion's epicenter. The roof and outside wall were both completely gone, and the solid steel door had been blown across the hall into the opposing door and taken it with it through the far wall. "Right...and, here we are.

"Now, as near as we can determine, at around 2:40AM this morning, the prisoner--Nicholas Marcus Harper--somehow created a large, unstable field of raw psychic aggression and...well, did all this. We're only lucky the entire building didn't go up in flames." Boole coughed. "Anyway. We're still working out the rest of the details. Honestly, none of us have any idea how he managed to create that aggression field--we were hoping you all might provide some explanation on that point."

"You were drugging him, at least. I hope," Sasha said, ignoring yet another warning glare from Truman.

"Oh, of course." Boole's hair seemed to bristle with irritation. "The man who invaded your headquarters, drove Ford Cruller insane and kidnapped Truman here--we're low on funds, Agent Nein. Not stupid."

Truman sighed. "So, he escaped. You think. Are you sure he didn't accidentally incinerate himself?"

"They're sure," Sasha answered. Boole huffed, clearly upset about the interruption, but was ignored. "Sir, with all due respect, you know Nick Harper as well as I do. Incinerating himself isn't a mistake he's likely to make."

"Precisely!" Boole cried, throwing himself back into the conversation with an enthusiastic bob of his white hair. "Well, that and his cellmate survived the explosion. Er, in part, at least. So it's likely that Harper did, as well."

For a long, silent moment, broken only by the sound of debris being shuffled about in the background, Sasha and Truman stared at one another. Then Truman, blinking slowly, turned back to Boole and said, "And you didn't mention this in your report to headquarters because...?"

"Well..." Boole motioned to the cell door. "You'd better see for yourselves. And, please--the floor is extremely unstable in here."

They stepped rather carefully into the cell. The padding that had once covered the floor and walls crunched and crumbled underneath their shoes; so, worryingly, did certain parts of the floor. Underneath all the padding, the floor was laced with heavy amounts of psitanium and tin, the better to keep the inmates under control. Even with several walls and the ceiling gone, Sasha and Truman could still feel the mixture's effects--an obnoxious buzzing at the back of their skulls and a sudden, disturbing sense of complete isolation.

The second thing they noticed in the room, aside from its effects on them, was the man curled up in the corner, slowly rocking back and forth. His face was hidden by long, stringy black hair, and he was muttering under his breath in what sounded like Latin. "_Nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas quod non ego sentiam. Nihil agis, nihil moliris..."_

"This would be Harper's cellmate, I'm assuming," Truman said, bending down to get a closer look at him.

Boole nodded. "Oskar Galochio; that's him."

"A member of the Galochio family?" Both of Sasha's eyebrows shot up at once. "You placed Nick Harper in the same room as a _Galochio_?"

Under the weight of Sasha's stare, Boole's already diminutive frame seemed to shrink even more. "Ah, well--Oskar here was never a particularly talented psychic. Amounted to very little. Something of a black sheep in the family, you see," he said, his voice slowly picking up strength. "He was the best choice for Harper's cellmate; all the other inmates were simply too dangerous. This _is _a maximum security prison, you'll recall."

"What happened to him?" Truman asked, waving a hand in front of Oskar's face--Oskar didn't even seem to notice he was there, but rather kept on muttering.

"We're not entirely sure." Boole glared at Sasha out of the corner of his eye, then quickly straightened his shirt collar and acted as if nothing had happened when Sasha glared back. "The last guard who tried to get anywhere near him...well, after his reconstructive surgery I'm sure he'll be fine."

"_...quod non ego sentiam. Nihil agis..."_

Truman jumped to his feet and quickly backed away. "So, ah...what's he saying? Maybe there's some sort of--"

"'You do nothing, you plan nothing, you think nothing which I do not know.'" Sasha paused, then added, "Latin. Sounds vaguely familiar, actually. No doubt stolen from an ancient source." (1)

"Right," Truman muttered. "Well, looks like we'll have to take a look--"

There was a series of crashes out in the hallway, followed by a familiar male voice: "Oh, geez--sorry! I, uh...was that evidence?"

Sasha and Truman exchanged a glance. "Kowalski," Truman sighed. Then, out into the hallway, "Louis! We're in here."

A few more crashes later, and Kowalski stumbled into the cell, tripping over some debris in the doorway and landing face-first at Sasha's feet. The floor below them creaked rather uneasily. "Sorry, sir." He stood up and slowly dusted himself off. "Just wanted to give you your cellphone back...oh, and your daughter called, she said she needs to talk to you about--"

At which point that part of the floor groaned, cracked, and gave way. Sasha didn't even flinch, hovering in mid-air for a few seconds before finding his way to more solid ground. Kowalski, on the other hand, wasn't quite as quick on his feet and went crashing down to the ground floor.

"I'm okay! Uh...not so sure about your cellphone though, sir."

Truman let out a long, slow sigh and fished a psychoportal out of his pocket. "Sasha...let's go; we've got to sort this thing out. _Before _Kowalski gets back up here, preferably."

"That would be advisable, yes."

The psychoportal flew onto Oskar's forehead in the middle of yet another "_nihil cogitas" _and popped open, momentarily filling the room with a strange white light.

* * *

The knock on the door preceded the young man's voice by more than several paces. "Agent Fuentes?" 

Isabella glanced up from her computer screen, the telephone, and the eight thousand other things on her desk she had left to do. "The door's open, Mr. Harrison," she called, then turned her attention back to the phone. "I know that, but if you could--I _know_--oh, _hijo de_...no, no, I wasn't talking to you..."

Zeke opened the door and slipped inside her office, standing--and doing quite a bit of fidgeting--just inside the doorway. Isabella motioned him to a seat, which he didn't take.

"Listen, all I want to--all right, fine. But make sure he calls me, do you understand? I need to know what's going on; I can't keep these kids--fine. Goodbye." She hung up the phone with more force than was necessary. "_Mierda_," she muttered--then looked up, suddenly remembering there was a student in her office. "But you didn't hear that, Mr. Harrison."

Zeke held one hand up in mock surrender. "I must be slowly going deaf, Agent Fuentes."

She smiled, brushing a few stray strands of long black hair--going gray a lot faster than she would've liked it to--out of her eyes. "So, Mr. Harrison...I hope you'll be explaining in very short order why you're not following proper lockdown procedures."

"Yeah, about that..." His feet shuffled again and an invisible hand ruffled his hair. "Look, you know how Agent Si--uh, Agent Oleander--was supposed to be coming back from Moscow today?"

Isabella sighed, burying her sharply angular face in her hands. "No, I didn't, because _no one tells me any_--I'm sorry." She looked up. "You were saying?"

"Yeah. Raz was supposed to pick him up at the airport."

"Listen," she began, rubbing her temples, "I have a migraine and a lockdown situation to deal with, so if you could get to the point..."

Zeke shuffled his feet for a few seconds more, then blurted out, "If he was supposed to be at the airport, and I saw him leave...well, sorta on time, then why did Agent Oleander just call me wanting to know where the hell his ride went to, and why are my truck and my roommate both missing?"

For a long moment, Isabella stared at him. Then she pointed at one of the two chairs in her office with a stern, "Sit." Zeke did as he was told while she picked up the phone and hit one of the speed dial buttons. "Patch me through to Agent Shackley. _Now_, Rupert." She glanced up at Zeke, dark brown eyes filled with worry. "I think we have a situation here."

* * *

**A/N: **(1) Just to give credit where it's due...yes, it's from an ancient source, namely Cicero's first oration against Catiline. Although I did admittedly tweak the Latin a bit, as the full version translates to: "You do nothing, you plan nothing, you think nothing which I not only do not hear, but also which I do not see and know completely." 


	3. In The Forests of Forgetting

**Chapter Two: In the Forests of Forgetting**

"Well," Truman said, looking around, "this is new."

"If by 'new' you mean 'completely deranged,' then yes, I agree," Sasha replied, taking in the twisted mental landscape with a cool expression. They were standing just outside the boundary of what must have once been a semi-peaceful Latvian forest but was now nothing short of nightmarish, somehow managing to be both overgrown and dying back at the same time. Vines crept up the once lush trees--in the handful of seconds it took for them to examine the area, the vines had shot up at least another foot--and were quickly strangling the life out of them.

The sky overhead was dark, threatening rain, and the way the clouds were churning and turning varying shades of green added an ominous pall to the scene. Ravens pin-wheeled silently above their heads, exactly out of rhythm with the cloudscape.

"So, ah..." Truman cleared his throat gently. Somewhere deep in the forest, a tree groaned, cracked, and crashed to the ground, causing both of them to jump. "Er. We should get moving."

"Agreed."

Surprisingly, a worn-down dirt path into the forest still remained, although vines had grown across it at certain points and made it nearly impassable. Truman, with Sasha bringing up rear guard, carefully made his way down the path, pushing vines out of the way with telekinesis. Often, as soon as they'd walked past, the vines would simply creep back into place as if nothing had happened. The forest around them was dark--very little light filtered down past the canopy--and altogether much too quiet. The only noise came from the occasional raven overhead or vines sliding their way past leaves and tree bark.

"Listen, Nein," Truman began after a long silence, "I think we need to talk."

Sasha slapped away a vine that was trying to creep into his personal space. "About?"

"Well, to start with, your attitude. I swear, I haven't seen you this damn cranky since Agent Vodello left."

Sasha stopped dead in his tracks. A vine started to slither by the back of his neck, only to spontaneously burst into flame. "Sir," he began, almost spitting out the word, "you'll forgive me if I don't exactly see the connecting relevance between that...incident and this one."

Truman stopped and turned around, arms folded across his chest. "It's called a _comparison_, Nein. Now, I know you and Nick have a history--"

"That's putting it mildly," Sasha muttered, snorting.

"--but your being a pain in the ass isn't helping the mission any." He sighed. Somewhere off in the distance, another tree crashed to the ground. "We'd all like to strangle Nick, okay? Personally, I'd like to do a lot more than that, considering what he did to me--but the point is, you're letting your personal feelings for the situation affect your judgment."

Sasha's back stiffened and he seemed to bristle with anger. "With all due respect, _sir_--"

"Snap out of it, Nein," Truman interrupted, his raised voice startling a group of ravens out of a nearby tree, "or you're off this mission and back to headquarters to twiddle your thumbs, and to hell with how qualified you are to help us. Am I clear?"

Sasha had to pause and consider what Truman had said for a moment. Then, "Fine."

Truman smiled faintly. "Good. Now--"

Which was precisely when something flopped out of the tree overhead and landed in the dirt between them with a sickening _splat_. Sasha and Truman both stared down at the shapeless blob for a few long seconds. "What _is _that?" Truman finally asked, debating over whether or not to poke it with his shoe.

"I think..." Being very careful not to get too close, Sasha bent down to examine it. "It's a bird," he said, straightening. "Clearly dead. A raven, if you'd like to be precise."

Truman glanced up at the tree it had fallen out of, then back down at the body. He reached out very carefully with his telekinesis and picked it up--it flopped over, its wings dragging limply in the dirt. "It's..." He went to poke it, but Sasha stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

"I wouldn't, sir. Germs."

Truman shook him off and poked the bird anyway. Blood and fluid seeped out of half a dozen wounds that looked like they'd been made by rather sharp claws. "It's completely _boneless_," he said, dropping it back to the ground. He quickly wiped his hand off on a vine creeping nearby. "Something came along and ripped all its bones out."

"Very precisely, if they managed to keep the body intact," Sasha added.

"Couldn't have been done by an animal..." Truman began, then trailed off into silence, glancing around at the darker parts of the forest. "Maybe we'd better keep moving."

They walked on in silence after that, carefully picking their way down the path, and both of them keeping a closer eye on the surrounding forest than before. The trail eventually petered out into nothingness just in front of a particularly large, dead tree--the only thing keeping it from falling over were the vines wrapped around it, binding it to several other trees nearby.

"Well," Sasha said, glancing up at the tree, "this exercise has proven almost entirely pointless."

"We must've missed a turn or something..."

"I sincerely--" Sasha stopped in his tracks, sniffing the air. "Sir, do you smell..."

Truman nodded. "Smoke, yes." He tilted his head towards the forest at his left. "I think it's coming from this way." Without waiting to see if Sasha would follow, he psi-blasted an opening through the vines and took off into the forest.

Once off the path, the forest turned into a vast, complicated maze of tree trunks--the trees had grown so close together that they blocked out the sun, leaving all the lower branches dead and bare--broken only by the creeping vines and an odd, thick fog. Strangely enough, all the trees seemed to grow in the same, twisting pattern, creating natural paths and leading anyone who might be walking them to the same location, no matter where they started from.

Truman jogged down the would-be paths as fast as he could, with Sasha close behind and muttering about poor decision-making the whole way. They both skidded to a stop at the trail's end, nearly colliding with one another. They had come to the edge of a small clearing that formed the forest's center. A deer that had been grazing there bounded off into the trees, startled by their less than stealthy approach.

In the past, the clearing might have been beautiful, with its running stream and clear view of the sky overhead. Now, it was little more than smoldering ruins. The stream barely moved at all; it was dirty, sluggish, and Sasha had a feeling it was likely poisonous besides. The grass, what little there was of it, was all dead and dying.

Scattered around the clearing was the source of the smoke: a number of burned out gypsy caravans in varying states of disrepair, but all of them still smoking, as if they'd been burned recently. Someone had spray-painted graffiti on almost every available surface in an angry red paint--"_nihil cogitas" _was the most prevalent, followed by the occasional "_nihil cogito?"_ (1)

They both took a quick survey of the scene, until Sasha, stepping out from under the tree cover--the grass crunched and crumbled underneath the heels of his shoes--said, "I suppose this would be the best place to find Galochio's memory vaults, if there are any to be found."

"If there's any _left_," Truman added, kicking aside a plank that had "_nihil agis" _scrawled all over it. Then, motioning to the caravans on his left, "You check that half. I'll check the rest."

The caravans weren't all that difficult to search, considering they had, for the most part, been burned down to their fragile frames. All Sasha had found in the first couple of caravans was ash, graffiti, and some skeletons belonging to some sort of small animal. He didn't particularly care to examine those too closely.

_Crack._

Sasha dropped the burnt piece of plywood he'd been lifting, all of his mental focus shifting to the forest behind him. Somewhere, probably less than ten feet away, a twig had snapped. _Hm...curious_.

He scanned the surrounding area without finding anything out of the ordinary save for a wayward, half-dead censor hell-bent on stomping out any exposed tree roots it came across. _Must have been the deer_, he thought, moving on to the next--and last--caravan. This one was a little more intact than the others; the walls were all still in place, although the ceiling had caved in. Sasha was just about to step inside when there was a loud crash from the other side of the clearing.

"Hey, Nein!" Another crash, the sound of wood splintering, and a grunt from Truman. "We've got a live one here!"

Sasha bit back a sigh and some rather unflattering remarks. "I take it you've found the memory vault, sir."

After yet another crash and the heavy _thunk _of a safe door swinging open and hitting someone's shins, Truman answered, "Uh, yeah. Pretty sure it's the right one."

Sasha rounded the corner to find Truman sitting amongst the ruins of one of the caravans, right on top of a gray-green memory vault. The vault continued to struggle to break free and escape; Truman had to kick it every so often to keep it still.

"It looks like--" Truman kicked the vault again-- "it looks like they all crawled here to die," he said, nodding to debris at his feet. Sasha took a second look at it as he approached and noticed for the first time the small, quadrupedal safes peeking out from under burnt wood and chipped paint. All of them lay still, turned a dull gray color tinted by rust.

"Memory vaults don't just...die," he said, shaking his head.

"I've got some pretty compelling evidence that says otherwise." Truman finally hopped off the vault, walking around in front of it. "This one must be younger...whatever got to the other ones hasn't had time to kill this one yet."

"Or it could be an older memory, perhaps a primal one. Something difficult to kill."

Truman sighed. "Look, are we going to stand around debating this, or are we going to see what's inside?"

Simultaneously, they both reached inside the vault--

* * *

Nicholas Harper paced the padded white-walled room, back and forth and back and forth, counting out each step under his breath. "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand _three_..." His normally curly blond hair was straight and limp, plastered to the sides of his head down to his ears by sweat, and his normally bright dark blue eyes had a dull sheen to them. With every step he took, he shivered. "One thousand nine, one thousand ten..."

Leaning against the wall in the corner across from him, behind where Sasha and Truman were now standing, Oskar Galochio watched Nick's every move with a hint of concern. "You okay, Nicky?" He had an exceptionally thick accent; Sasha ended up having to translate what he said for Truman.

"Shut up." Nick rubbed some sweat off his face with the palms of his hands before it could drip into his eyes. "One thousand twenty-one, one thousand twenty-two..."

At the count of one thousand twenty-seven steps, he abruptly stopped and turned to face the door. Sasha happened to be standing in the way, but Nick stared right through him, oblivious.

It was still a full minute, however, before someone unlocked the door and opened it just wide enough for them to slip through. A tall African-American man wearing a white orderly's jacket entered the room, carrying two syringes full of a cloudy white substance. "All right, boys," he said cheerfully, closing the door behind him and locking it, "time for your medications."

Nick leveled a dull, angry glare at the man. "Shut _up_, Robert. I'm not paying you to be clever."

Robert chuckled. "If you say so, boss." He went first to Oskar, rolling back the sleeve on his left arm and poking around in the crook of his elbow until he found a vein. "Shift change is in ten minutes," he said, injecting the drug into Oskar's arm. Oskar winced.

"Nine," Nick corrected, rubbing his arms as if for warmth. "You're late."

"Well, sorry." Robert shrugged, rolling Oskar's sleeve back down and patting his arm. "Bit of a scuffle down on the second floor; couple of cellmates tried to kill each other. You know how it is." Next, he turned to Nick, taking his right arm and searching for a vein.

Nick breathed out a slow sigh, scratching the side of his face. He looked as if he hadn't shaved in at least a week, and he'd scratched and pulled away some of the resulting facial hair, leaving his developing beard patchy at best. "You know, if you really wanted to do something useful, you'd be giving me drugs to counter these withdrawal symptoms instead of pumping me full of this placebo crap."

"That's not what you're paying me for, _boss_," Robert answered, smiling. "You pay me to stop giving you the psychic power blocking drugs...that's just what I do." He tapped Nick's arm, dropping the empty syringe into his pocket. "Eight minutes 'till shift change."

He left the room with only a backward glance at Oskar, locking and bolting the door behind him. As soon as Robert was gone, Nick snapped to attention, spine straightening, his eyes suddenly regaining the fierce gleam Sasha remembered from years past. It still unsettled him more than a little. Nick turned to Oskar. "You still remember?"

Oskar nodded. "_Nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas quod non ego sentiam_," he recited in a faltering, jerky sort of rhythm. His pronunciation was abysmal to say the least, but Nick smiled, clearly pleased.

"Good. Don't forget." He crossed the room in a few short steps--walking right through Truman like some sort of phantom--and made to grab hold of Oskar's head, but the other man stopped him, grabbing him by his wrists.

"You've still got at least seven minutes 'till--"

The corners of Nick's thin lips quirked into a strange half-smile. "I'm not paying Robert to survive, either." He patted Oskar's cheek gently. "See you on the other side, right?"

Oskar didn't get a chance to respond. Nick threw him against the wall, a red-yellow thought shield shimmering into place around them, and then the room exploded in a sudden burst of light and heat. The shockwave was so intense, Sasha covered his eyes with his sleeve--an automatic, instinctive reaction; as it was, the explosion merely flowed and dissipated around them harmlessly.

The memory deteriorated exponentially from there. The blinding whiteness never quite went away, and the only sound was a vague ringing that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Only one partially coherent image emerged from the haze, a few seconds after Sasha estimated the actual explosion had died down--a tall, emaciated figure with a thick head of blond-hair leaping down towards the building grounds, disappearing into the night.

* * *

As soon as the memory ended, Truman turned to Sasha. "We're going to have to find out if Robert survived the explosion."

"It's unlikely," Sasha said, glancing down at the vault, "but we should investigate his background in either case." He looked around at the mental landscape--the clouds seemed to have grown darker and more ominous since their arrival, the air heavy and still. Perhaps, he thought, it was going to rain. "We should also consider the possibility that Nick may have had further outside help."

Truman nodded slowly. "I thought we rounded up most of his power base and wiped out all his funding...maybe we missed something." He nudged the memory vault with his shoe. It didn't move, and had in fact started to take on a dull, gray pallor similar to the dead vaults nearby.

"Or he found someone willing to help him--the Galochios, for example."

Truman was about to ask what could possibly inspire the psychic underground's equivalent of a mob family to free the man who'd double-crossed them routinely when something in the forest hit the ground with a crash. From the sound of it, whatever had fallen was much too small and compact to be one of the massive trees that had been falling around them almost like clockwork.

"Uh--Agent Nein? Mr. Zanotto, sir? Are you even around--man, those vines grow fast...hey! That's my arm!"

Sasha quirked an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware Agent Kowalski had field clearance."

"He doesn't," Truman muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "I swear, the second we get all this straightened out, I'm transferring him right back to San Francisco faster than he can blink."

A few seconds later, Kowalski's tall, skinny form tumbled out of the forest, dragging a mess of creeping vines along with him. "Oh. There you are. I thought you might be--"

Truman cut him off with an angry wave of his hand. "Kowalski, what the _hell _do you think you're doing? You don't have clearance to be here--you don't have clearance to be in _anybody's _head, much less one tied into such a sensitive investigation! I want you out. Now."

Kowalski seemed to shrink visibly. He was taller than Truman by at least a couple of inches, but for the moment at least he seemed very small indeed. "I--" a pause to stop and clear his throat, almost timidly-- "I'm sorry, sir, but--"

"Damn right you should be," Truman grumbled. He started to issue a few more orders, but was held back by Sasha.

"Sir," he said, watching Kowalski--who had fixed his light blue eyes on the forest floor, "it's possible Agent Kowalski just had some sort of pressing news to deliver...some development in the case, perhaps."

Kowalski was quick to nod, jumping back into the conversation. "Uh, yeah. Agent Shackley just called--your cellphone still works, by the way." He cleared his throat and continued, "You're needed back at headquarters right away."

"Did they find Harper?"

His feet shuffled anxiously. "Well, no, not exactly. But, ah--it's funny, your daughter actually mentioned this when she called earlier, and I was trying to tell you, but--"

"The _point_, Kowalski," Truman interrupted, voice low and strained.

"Well, sir, apparently Harper--"

Whatever Kowalski had been about to say was promptly forgotten, however, as a dark figure that was really more of a vague blur than anything solid burst out of the forest and tackled him. They went tumbling between Truman and Sasha--knocking both men nearly off their feet in the process--and smashed into a nearby caravan.

It only took a brief moment for Sasha to orient himself and fully take in the situation. The creature, whatever it was, was so entangled with Kowalski--and rather intent on shredding him with its long, wickedly curved claws that glinted even in the fading light--that psi-blasting it without doing significant collateral damage was impossible. Instead, he reached out with telekinesis and attempted to pull the creature off--with surprisingly little success.

"Sir, it's--"

"Shielded, I noticed," Truman finished for him. "Maybe we should--"

"Uh, guys?" Kowalski had been in the process of escaping, but the creature hooked a claw into his leg and yanked him back. "_Help would be good!_" His voice reached up into a distressingly high pitch.

Truman turned to Sasha. "I'll pull, you shoot!"

Nodding, Sasha circled the clearing until he found what he hoped would be a good vantage point. He'd no sooner gotten into position when Truman's telekinetic hand grabbed hold of Kowalski's feet and pulled, tearing him free from the creature's grasp--and also tearing more flesh in the process. The moment Kowalski was clear, and just before the creature reared to turn and pounce on him again, Sasha shot it.

The first blast sent it flying into a fallen tree in a snarling mass, the second and third convinced it to stay where it had landed, temporarily stunned if not unconscious. Sasha immediately took up a position between the creature and his fellow agents, just in case it found a second wind.

Behind him, Truman was yelling--again--even as he helped Kowalski to his feet and tried to staunch the flow of blood. "Louis, what the _hell _did you think you were--"

"You asked me that already, sir," he interrupted, keeping a hand pressed against his right thigh. His first foray into the mental world, and he'd already ended up with several mental scars--Sasha didn't foresee him getting his field agent clearance any time soon. "Like I was saying--" a grunt of pain as he tried to put weight on his torn leg, then immediately thought better of it-- "they found Nick."

Sasha turned, focusing all his attention on their conversation now.

"Already?" Truman blinked, clearly surprised. "Where?"

"Uh..." Kowalski fidgeted, but whether it was out of pain or anxiety was hard to say. "Nick's wherever Razputin is. He went missing from the academy a few hours ago, and--"

The long stream of obscenities that came from Truman's mouth after that was very impressive. Sasha was rather tempted to follow suit, but managed to rein himself in at the last second.

"That's why Shackley wants us us back at headquarters," Kowalski continued--he seemed to be turning an unsettling shade of green. "He said he'll send a small group of agents up here to finish the investigation for you, sir." He paused, taking a few shuddering breaths. "You know, I don't feel so hot..."

"Mental damage," Truman said tersely. "You'll be fine." He was rooting around in his pockets, muttering something about smelling salts, when the creature loomed up behind Sasha, growling and spitting.

The creature had been large to begin with, but now--as if it were growing with every passing second--it seemed immense. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the werewolves of folklore, with its elongated, canine snout and dark red fur. But there was something in its eyes, a keen gleam of almost human intelligence, that set Sasha back on his heels. Whatever neuroses of Oskar's that had conjured it up and given it life had been deep and serious, no doubt.

"Aha!" Behind him, Truman had finally found the smelling salts and held them aloft, still keeping Kowalski steady with one hand. "Finally. We'd better get out of here, Sasha."

Sasha glanced down at his shoulder, where the creature had dribbled a fair amount of opaque, sticky-looking saliva. "Yes, we should," he answered thinly, psi-blasting the creature again--it staggered back only a few feet, more annoyed than it was wounded.

He stepped backwards, almost running into Kowalski as the man swayed on his feet and nearly passed out. Sasha dragged him back to something resembling a standing position just as the creature snarled and charged again. Truman held out a small, oval pillbox-like container, and Sasha grabbed hold of it and pulled--it snapped open, releasing a cloud of noxious fumes that made Kowalski gag.

Then everything went black.

* * *

"_...nihil moliris, nihil cogitas..."_

Sasha dusted off his jacket and straightened the collar, ignoring Oskar's continued ramblings. The cell was exactly as they'd left it, save for the absence of one Frederick Boole--he'd run out as soon as they returned to their own minds (or, in Kowalski's case, returned and then passed out on the floor), several guards in tow, saying something about a fight over in the building's right wing.

Truman was busy hauling Kowalski to his feet and shaking him back into consciousness, muttering things like "this is why he'll never make field agent" under his breath. "Louis! Dammit...too bad we don't have any real smelling salts."

Kowalski groaned, shaking himself awake--and then immediately regretted the motion and clutched his head in his hands. "I'm awake, sir...really." He took a few steps under his own power, then staggered right into a wall.

Sasha arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh, yeah," he answered, taking a few long seconds to catch his breath before continuing, "it's only a mild heart attack, plus a migraine. I'll be fine."

Truman promptly took the car keys from him and started for the door, pausing only briefly. "Then let's go; I'll drive, since you're in no shape to, Louis."

"Good idea." Kowalski staggered out into the hall with Sasha following not far behind, if only to make sure he didn't fall over again. "I'll fill you in on what Agent Shackley told me on the way to the airstrip."

"Ah," Truman muttered under his breath, "competency. How refreshing."

* * *

The SUV swung around a sharp curve at more than twenty miles over the posted speed limit, forcing Sasha to latch onto the passenger side door for dear life. In the back, Kowalski slid off the seat--he'd decided against staying upright for any extended length of time, at least for the moment--and onto the floor with a groan. Truman, meanwhile, kept his eyes fixed on the road and his foot glued to the gas pedal.

"So, ah--" Kowalski climbed back up onto the seat, only to fall off again at the next sharp turn-- "Agents Marks and Armistead found the missing truck in the airport parking lot, so it looks like Nick or someone working for Nick got to him between the lot and the arrival gate."

"Security tapes?" It was more of a grunt than an actual question.

Kowalski shrugged. "They were still working on it when Shackley called, sir."

Truman passed a slow-moving semi on the right, running roughshod over the gravel shoulder. "You said something about a video--"

"Some sort of satellite video feed, yeah," Kowalski answered. He gnawed on his lower lip anxiously before continuing, "We'll be able to see it when we get back to the jet. Right now, it looks like Harper's hijacking our secure video frequency to broadcast this video of his."

"You mean to say it's being broadcast to all of our branch agencies, as well as headquarters?" Sasha asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. He thought he'd seen a police car behind them.

Kowalski nodded, ignoring a long string of profanity from Truman. "Yessir. There's also a video tape..."

"A ransom note?" Truman and Sasha both asked at once.

He fiddled with the high collar of his Psychonauts uniform, yanking it away from his throat as if it were choking him. "Ah...I guess you could call it that, sure. Agent Shackley told me Nick had it sent to your daughter, sir," he said, nodding weakly at Truman. "That's what she called about earlier."

For a moment, Truman stared straight ahead without showing any outward reaction, not even blinking. Then he let go of the wheel and whipped around in his seat, fixing Kowalski with a stare that had the agent sinking down towards the floor of the car.

Sasha promptly reached out and took the wheel to keep them from driving off the road. He also found the brake pedal and began applying some telekinetic pressure to it in order to get the car back under the legal speed limit.

"Do you mean to say," Truman began lowly, "that that raving _lunatic _not only knew my address, but he deliberately got my _sixteen-year-old daughter _involved?" Kowalski squeaked out something that might have been a "yes" in response, while in the front seat, Sasha began suggesting that Truman should either focus on driving or they should all consider updating their wills. Truman ignored him.

"He could have--she could've just as easily been kidnapped. I swear to God, if Bolt didn't get a security detail out there and get her to headquarters within five minutes, I'm going to bust him all the way down to janitor. Then I'll fire him. And possibly kill him."

"I'm sure Lili is fine, sir," Sasha said, struggling to keep his voice calm as he navigated another sharp bend in the road. "And oh, look, there's our exit. Sir, please--_drive_."

Truman finally turned and sat back down, taking the wheel from Sasha, who was all too happy to relinquish it. They drove the rest of the way to the airstrip in silence.

* * *

The jet was ready and waiting when Truman brought the SUV to a screeching halt next to it. Sasha slid out the door and headed for the jet immediately, muttering something about being thankful to be alive. The jet's pilot, a tall, muscular man with shaggy blond hair and a tan that suggested he'd rather be on a beach somewhere in southern California, waved to them from the cockpit as they all climbed aboard.

"Get us in the air and back to headquarters, Fahrenheit," Truman ordered, just as soon as Kowalski was settled comfortably in a seat. He still looked an uncomfortable shade of green--Sasha handed him an air sickness bag on his way to the cockpit, just in case.

Fahrenheit nodded. "Right away, Mr. Zanotto." Not glancing up from a few last minute pre-flight checks, he inclined his head towards the co-pilot's seat. "Oh, yeah, there's a vid waiting for you."

Truman slid into the indicated seat. Sasha took up hovering over his shoulder. Ignoring the invasion of his personal space for the moment, Truman flipped on the comm screen and brought up the video footage Agent Shackley had had sent to them.

As the jet took off, the screen flickered to life in oddly vivid color. Nicholas Harper stood front and center, adjusting a stage light offscreen before turning his attention to the camera. He'd shaved off his beard at some point, and his eyes had that old sharp, dangerous gleam back in them. After a minute adjustment to the camera, he smiled.

"_Ah, Truman, it's been a long time...and no, Sasha, I'm not forgetting you, since I know you'll be watching. I'm just ignoring you._

"_Anyway, gentlemen, I think it's time we had a little chat. Remember the last time you all got it in your heads to capture me...?"_

* * *

(1) "nihil cogito?" "I think nothing?"


	4. Pet Projects

**Disclaimer / Author's Note: **Agent Murphy appears courtesy of AKA, and is used with permission.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Pet Projects**

_Six years earlier:_

"I said _five more minutes_!" Nick yelled, throwing another piece of equipment up against the door. It was made of reinforced steel, and he'd secured it with all the heaviest equipment in the lab he knew he wouldn't need, but he knew too well who he was up against. "Come on, Sasha," he said under his breath to no one in particular. "Five more minutes in the name of science."

Ignoring the echoes of shouts and psi-blasts being traded back and forth out in the hallway, Nick made a few small adjustments to the control board in front of him before shifting his attention to the chair it was connected to.

Truman Zanotto sat in the tall, straight-backed metal chair, restrained by straps around his wrists, ankles, and forehead. His skin was pale and he'd broken out into a cold sweat, though he never so much as twitched, save for the faint, unsteady rising and falling of his chest. His light brown eyes stayed open unnaturally, not even blinking--they were tinged red and watery from the strain. An IV hooked into the crook of his right arm kept a constant cocktail of drugs flowing into his system, designed to keep him sedated and his psychic powers under control.

Nick quickly dragged one of the last pieces of equipment he hadn't thrown against the door over and placed it in front of Truman. It was relatively light-weight, comprised entirely of a thin steel frame meant to support the surgical laser and control panel hooked up near the top of it. With something akin to panicked precision, Nick ran a tangled mess of wires from the control panel back around to the computer console before lining the laser up at Truman's eye level.

"Okay..." Someone psi-blasted the door with enough force to rattle it on its hinges. Nick jumped and stepped up the pace again. "Just give me five more minutes, Sasha, and I'll have completely brainwashed our friend Truman beyond even _your _repair."

He was so wrapped up in making his hasty, last minute calculations that he didn't notice the small, shadowy figure drop out of an air vent overhead. It disappeared before it hit the floor with only a whisper of sound that could never have been overheard from the din outside.

Nick made a few last minute adjustments to the laser, smiling grimly. "'A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.' Isn't that what they say, Truman?" (1) Powering up the contraption, he paused to make sure the bright red laser beam was aligned exactly with Truman's open eye, then moved back towards the computer console. "Which is why you're going to get quite a lot of instruction...in five, four, three--"

At which point, much to Nick's dismay, the laser powered down with a click and a mechanical whine. "_Goddammit_!" He slammed his hands down on the console hard enough to rattle the solid block of steel and circuits on the bolts that held it to the floor. Outside, the battle seemed to be coming to a close--someone psi-blasted the door twice, sending a stray computer monitor flying.

"Okay, six more minutes," Nick said to the door, then dashed over to examine the laser. Truman didn't even twitch, much less acknowledge all that was going on around him.

Swearing under his breath, Nick hastily checked all the connecting wires and cables: all were in place, suggesting that something had gone wrong inside the machine itself. "No, no, not now..." Then his gaze fell on the power cord. It had been pulled taut earlier, but now it was lying slack on the floor.

"Oh, for the love of--" Muttering a few more choice curse words, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled around behind the chair, digging through a rat's nest of wires to find the end of the disconnected power cord, as well as the electrical strip it was supposed to plug into. "Stupid piece of shit--aha!"

He was just about to plug the machine back in when the bright, angry red jet of a psi-blast flashed across the room, striking him solidly from behind and sending him sprawling into the wall. "Dammit all to--who the hell--that was my _ass_, you moron!"

"I know," said a youthful voice. The faint outline of a small, long-limbed boy shimmered into view, starting from his feet and ending with a pair of goggles perched on the top of his head.

Nick twisted around onto his back to stare at the boy who had just appeared in his lab. Then he laughed. His voice had a sudden manic tinge, although the boy didn't seem at all worried by it. "You're just a _kid_," he sputtered. He scrambled to his feet--the boy tried to psi-blast him back to the ground, but Nick deflected it, sending the burst of aggression winging into a wall. "I don't believe this. I kidnap their Grand Head, and the Psychonauts send Pee-wee Jr. to stop me?"

"Hey, I--"

Nick laughed again, blond hair flying wild. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen." He reached out with his telekinesis and grabbed the boy by the throat, lifting him into the air. Surprisingly, he put up more resistance than Nick was expecting. Within seconds, the boy's mental shields had flown up, shoving Nick's telekinetic hand aside and dropping himself back to the floor with the easy grace of an acrobat.

Nick reached out again, but this time with something more like curiosity. They started circling one another around Truman's chair as Nick tried again and again to pry his way into the child's mind--only to be thrown back each time with surprising force. "Well, you're an interesting one, aren't you?" he asked, voice tinged with false sweetness. "So whose pet project are you?"

"Nobody's," the boy answered, psi-blasting him again. Nick was expecting the attack and shielded himself from it at the last second.

"Hm. You've got good aim, kid. Between that and your natural defenses, I'd say Agent Nein. You remind me of him...all control and devotion to the job, no personality." Nick circled closer, still trying to find any sort of crack in the other's defenses. He wasn't having much luck, but--_oh_, he thought, _there're possibilities here_.

The noise at the door behind them was growing more insistent and forceful; Nick was running out of time. "I'm right, aren't I? You're Nein's latest experiment."

He shook his head but didn't--to Nick's dismay--drop his concentration. "Agent Nein doesn't...well, okay, I guess you could call the Brain Tumbler 'experimenting,'" he corrected, frowning a bit. "But I'm nobody's pet."

Nick laughed. "Yeah, you just keep deluding yourself, kid. Keep on thinking they're your friends, your teachers, when all they want to do is put you in a room and poke and prod you until they can explain you." With some telekinetic help, he hefted a heavy piece of equipment and tossed it at the boy--who latched onto it at the last second and threw it out of his way, grunting under the strain.

"And if you don't believe me," Nick continued, "just ask Agent Cruller who _his _pet project was."

"Let me guess...you?" the boy asked, unimpressed. When Nick nodded, he laughed, green eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Yeah, and I'm the goddamned Batman."

The acrid smell of smoke and burning metal filled the room; all the equipment Nick had used to barricade the door was now scattered on the floor around them, and whoever was in the hallway outside had evidently given up and decided to melt the door down. Nick glanced hurriedly at the door, then back at the boy still standing, face twisted in concentration and defiance, not five feet away.

"You're strong," he said quietly. "I'll give you that. But come talk to me in five years--when they've picked your brain all apart and gotten sick of you. We'll see how strong you are then..._Batman_." Nick had found the opening in the boy's defenses he was looking for: a tiny, almost imperceptible crack, not noticeable to anyone who hadn't spent years learning how to break down the mental defenses of even the most extraordinary psychic. Grinning, he reached out with his own mind and--

--the bulky, rectangular piece of equipment he'd thrown at the boy just a few minutes ago made a sudden rebound, slamming into Nick's stomach with enough force to knock the wind out of him and send him flying into the far wall. He went limp, his muscles temporarily refusing to cooperate, and the heavy chunk of steel collapsed on top of him.

Something in his left leg made an unpleasant cracking noise. "Son of a bitch," he hissed, just as soon as he regained enough breath to speak. "Who the hell _are _you?"

The boy peered over the top of the machine, his smirk wide and extraordinarily confident. "I told you. I'm the goddamned Batman."

"Razputin! Sweetie, what have I told you about watching your language?"

Agent Milla Vodello stepped in through the hole she and Sasha had melted through the door, frowning at Raz in a manner that was distinctly maternal. Her long brown hair was all in tangles, which matched her torn and dirty clothes and the scratches someone had put on her right arm. All trace of exhaustion disappeared from her face, however, the moment she caught a glimpse of Truman--who hadn't so much as twitched while the confrontation had gone on around him.

She flew to his side in an instant, gently calling out his name as she eased the IV needle from his arm. "Truman? Darling, can you hear me?"

Sasha, on the other hand, although his impeccable calm had seemingly slipped a bit, showed no outward signs of exhaustion or concern as he moved the equipment away from Nick and went to restrain him. "Excellent work, Razputin," he said, nodding to Raz and ignoring Nick almost entirely. "Although running off alone on such a dangerous mission is unwise."

Raz shrugged, beaming over the faint praise. "Still all in a day's work for a Psychonaut, right?"

* * *

_Present:_

"_What was it you said to the kid, Sasha? It was right before I passed out, see, so--oh, now I remember. That he shouldn't run off alone?" _Nick paused, almost as if giving Sasha a chance to respond, although the tape had been recorded hours earlier. "_You're right. And you know, it's just like kids--they never listen to you."_

He stepped away, adjusting the camera so it zoomed out and an entire room appeared to open up around him. It was too dark for either Sasha or Truman to make much of anything out, no matter how hard they squinted--the room's only spotlight was focused on a plexiglas cell tall enough to almost reach the ceiling, although it was only about five feet wide and just as deep. A short series of metal platforms, all barely wide enough for the average person to stand on sideways, went up one side of the cell to a metal cap that was fitted over the top.

Both Sasha and Truman, however, were rather more concerned with the crumpled form sprawled, facedown, on the cell's concrete floor. Sasha noticed it first, gripping the seat's headrest so tightly his knuckles were surely turning white inside his gloves.

"Son of a bitch," Truman hissed through clenched teeth. "Tell me that _isn't _who I think it is."

Sasha only shook his head mutely in response.

"_Let's see...Agent Razputin Aquato, I think his name is. Alias 'goddamned Batman'; do I have that right?" _Nick asked, stepping back into the frame and blocking Razputin from view. He grinned, showing off a flash of faintly yellowed teeth. "_Don't worry; he's still alive. I may hate your fetid, cowardly guts, Sasha, but I won't kill your pet project--not yet. He's still too useful."_

The jet left the runway with a sickening lurch. Onscreen, Nick continued, "_My old friend--Oskar Galochio; you may have met him--told me some things about Razputin's family. Cursed to die in water, huh? Well..." _He motioned around in the room in a grand, sweeping gesture that neatly pantomimed the sinking feeling in Sasha's stomach. "_Once our boy wonder here wakes up, that cell he's in will start filling up with water. It should be completely filled about twenty-four hours from now--so, say, 9:32AM tomorrow--and I don't think I need to tell you what happens then."_

Nick chuckled, shaking his head. "_Of course, he could just use his immense psychic powers to escape, but--as I'm sure you've already guessed, Sasha, and as I'm equally sure you haven't begun to contemplate, Truman--I've had him drugged with a particularly heavy dose of Psyche C. So I'm afraid that won't be an option."_

For a moment, he paused, then continued with all seriousness, "_I won't make any particular demands of you--yet. You have twenty-four hours to find him. To help motivate you, I'll be commandeering your satellite video channel in order to broadcast a feed of this room. And no, should you fail to find him in time, I won't spare you and turn it off." _With a mock-salute, he said, "_Lili, give my regards to your father, won't you?" _before shutting off the camera.

The screen went blue momentarily before defaulting to the Psychonauts' private video channel--which, as Nick's hijack of the feed was still very much in place, was broadcasting a view of Razputin's cell. For now, he was still unconscious, and water had yet to start pouring in. Truman stared at the tiny monitor for only a split second before switching it off, punching the button with much greater force than was necessary.

"I swear, when I get my hands on Harper's scrawny little neck, I'm going to--" he began, then checked himself and straightened in the chair, clearing his throat. "Right. Nein, as soon as we get back to headquarters, you're in charge of the task force responsible for finding Razputin. We'll let...oh, I don't know, Marks and Armistead deal with Harper for now."

Sasha frowned, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose from where they'd slipped. "Sir, while I don't disagree that finding Razputin should be a priority, I believe my prior knowledge of Harper would--"

"Nein." Truman didn't turn to look at him, staring out the window ahead, but his voice was terse and sharp. "I said _no_. Harper's obviously on some sort of revenge kick--"

"In that case, we should find him before he decides to extend his revenge plans to anyone else."

Truman shook his head. "You and I both know it'll take more than twenty-four hours to find Harper, and I'm not leaving that kid in danger any longer than we already have. I won't spare your ego: you're one of our best agents, and you probably know better than any of us--well, besides me, and now Razputin--what Harper's tactics are in terms of kidnapping." He stood up and started towards the jet's cabin. "I've made my decision. Find Razputin, then you can join the manhunt."

Sasha's jaw tightened, although he didn't say anything more. He was just about to follow Truman into the cabin when Fahrenheit spoke up.

"Uh, sirs?"

"What is it now, Hamilton?" Sasha asked, sighing.

"Ah..." Fahrenheit scratched the back of his head anxiously. "I forgot to mention earlier...Mr. Zanotto, sir, you've got a bunch of messages about the kidnapping mess. There's incoming phone calls from Rio, London, San Francisco, Cedar, Moscow, and Nairobi...in that order, more or less. It got a little confusing near the end."

The communications console to his right beeped twice. "Oh," he added, glancing at it, "and now Brisbane, too."

From the cabin, there was a sound roughly akin to Truman slamming his head against the wall. "_Fantastic_," he muttered. "Another scandal and a bunch of hungry sharks at the branch agencies circling my job--that's _just _what I need. Didn't we just go through this six years ago with the Agent Oleander incident?"

"Yes, sir, we did." That was Kowalski, who seemed to have recovered most of his health since take-off.

"The question was rhetorical." Truman returned to the cockpit, waving Sasha out of his way. Sasha calmly stepped aside, although he didn't leave to take a seat in the main cabin, instead preferring to stay hovering, perhaps passive-aggressively, near Truman's shoulder. "Fahrenheit, put me through to Agent Shackley."

"Right." After a moment of fiddling with the communications console, he nodded and said, "We should have him in a minute, sir. Audio only."

The audio in question was a particularly old and outdated radio speaker, badly in need of replacement but yet somehow never on the budget committee's list of priorities. Fahrenheit had to reach over and jiggle the on/off speaker switch before any sound would even come out.

"Mr. Zanotto, sir." Shackley's deep baritone voice crackled through the speaker. Fahrenheit hit the dashboard above it once with his fist and the static dissipated. "I trust you've been apprised of the situation?"

"We have, Bolt." Truman leaned back in his chair with a long sigh. "Two questions, first of all--is my daughter safe at headquarters? And have we notified Agent Aquato's parents yet?"

"Yes and no, sir. Your daughter's here with us, but we're having difficulties tracking down the boy's family. Seems the circus is currently in transit and nobody thought to pack a cellphone." This last was said with a certain sneering edge, which Truman ignored.

"Good, and keep trying on the parents." He glanced out the window as the jet tilted to the right suddenly, beginning the circle for its final approach to headquarters. "What's the media situation down there? I know it's already leaked to our branch agencies, but what about the news media?"

Silence fell for a moment, broken by a sharp crackle of static. "Under control to my knowledge. We've been in lockdown since Harper's escape this morning. So far as the media's concerned, we've just been a little more quiet than usual."

"Keep it that way," Truman said, voice terse. "The last thing the agency needs is for the Talking Head Brigade to find out our youngest agent in history's in mortal jeopardy."

"I'll see what I can do." Another, more hesitant pause. "Ah, sir, you realize we will have to make some sort of announcement to the press about Harper eventually...considering the fact that he's an armed and dangerous criminal. And currently at large."

Truman sighed, rubbing his temples again as if fighting off a migraine. "I know. I'll...deal with it later."

"Yessir. Is there anything else?"

"No. We can discuss the rest once I'm back at headquarters."

"All right then--I'll see you soon, sir. Shackley out."

The radio fell into a crackling, hissing sort of silence until Fahrenheit reached over and shut it off. "We should be landing at headquarters in just under five minutes, Mr. Zanotto," he said, nodding to the jumble of buildings and interconnected parking lots below.

* * *

The Lucrecia Mox Academy for the Psychically Gifted, a four-storied, two-winged building not more than five minutes' walk from Psychonauts headquarters, was still under lockdown with all classes canceled when Lili Zanotto slipped into the building. Security was unusually tight, with instructors and a few agents brought over from headquarters patrolling the halls--but Lili, who'd been sneaking in and out of the place to visit her boyfriend for almost two years, knew all the building's nooks and crannies she could duck into whenever they passed nearby.

It was easy enough for her to wind her way over to the student residences' wing and up to the second floor, where Raz and his roommate's room was. She moved a little more carefully here--there weren't any conveniently located hiding places to duck into, unless she wanted to dive into the men's room. Their room was in the exact middle of the hall, the door faintly ajar and loud music thumping through it. Lili slipped inside without bothering to knock; no one would've been able to hear her over the noise anyway.

"Zeke? _Zeke!_"

Zeke was sitting with his knees propped up against his desk, back to her, staring down at an old ratty textbook. He didn't even seem to realize she was in the room. Sighing, Lili let the door bang shut as she picked her way through the perpetual mess on the floor--_god, what _is _it with boys? Do they not believe in closets?_--to stand over his shoulder.

He still didn't notice she was there until she made a grand show of leaning over, long auburn hair tickling his neck, to check to see what god-awful country song his laptop speakers were spewing out. "'Bubba Shot The Jukebox?'"

"Holy mother of--" Zeke nearly tumbled out of his chair but managed to catch himself at the last second. The textbook went flying; his telekinetic hand retrieved it and dropped it back in his lap. "Lili?" he asked, coloring slightly. "Where'd you--uh--how'd you get in here?"

She smirked. "It's called a door, Zeke."

"Well, I knew _that_," he shot back, collecting himself at last. He shut the music off--much to the approval of one of his neighbors, who'd taken to pounding on their shared wall in hopes of shutting him up--and stood up, tossing the textbook onto the floor. "So, uh, what're you doing here? Shouldn't you be...I don't know, be at headquarters or something?"

Lili fidgeted, suddenly uncomfortable, and started braiding her hair as a distraction while she talked. "I guess you heard about what happened to Raz?"

"Yeah." Zeke nodded, broad shoulders shrinking into a slouch. "I got the general idea, anyway. Nobody's bothered to tell me any specifics." He paused, then added, "You doing okay? I mean..."

"I'm fine," she answered, shaking her hair out of the loose braid she'd wound it into. It slid down to just past her shoulders, save for one short, stubborn lock that fell in front of her right eye. "But I could use your help with something...if you're not too busy." She glanced at the laptop again with a faintly amused smirk.

Zeke shrugged. "Nah, just studying for the test I flunked last week. Got nothing else better to do. What d'you need?"

"Want to go on a little road trip?"

He grinned, showing off a flash of a wide--one might say crooked--smile. "_Hell_ yeah; let's go."

She matched his grin with one of her own and started for the door with a renewed spring in her step. "Good! Don't bother packing anything; we're not going that far."

"You sure?" he asked, grabbing his room keys and checking his hair (still short and black, and still unruly no matter how many times he combed it) on his way out the door. "I mean, if we're skipping town on everybody and running away from our problems, we might as well do it _right_. I'm thinking Miami. Or--how much money do we have for gas? Vegas could be cool too."

"I'm thinking you're weird, Zeke."

He flicked the lights off and closed the door, locking it behind him. "Hey! At least I'm not openly defying authority with all this standard rebellion stuff," he teased gently, reaching to ruffle her hair--she raised an eyebrow at him and he thought better of it, drawing his hand back. "_I_ know how to be non-standard."

Lili rolled her eyes. "You mean like 'Bubba Shot The Jukebox?'"

"It's a...symbol." He dropped his voice down to a faint whisper as they started moving through the hallways. "A symbol of rebellion. Or...yeah, fine, my friends back in Montana thought they were being funny when they bought me that CD, okay?"

Lili bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at him. It wasn't until they had made it out to the parking lot and to her car--Lili's father had bought it for her three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, as an apology for being in China and forgetting to call on her actual birthday--that she spoke again.

"So, when's the last time you were at Whispering Rock?"

Zeke stopped in the middle of buckling his seatbelt. "Never went. Why; you here to drag me to remedial training like Agent Fuentes is always threatening to?"

She shook her head. "No, just wondering." Fishing her keys out of her jeans pocket, she started up the car, adding, "There's somebody there we need to meet."

"Are you _sure_ we couldn't just go to Vegas instead?"

* * *

Bolt Shackley was a tall, dark-haired man with a build strongly resembling that of a professional wrestler. He stood waiting just outside of Truman's office, burly arms folded across his chest, fingers tapping on his forearm impatiently as he waited for the Grand Head of the Psychonauts to finish weaving his way through the crowd of agents in the hall. Half the agency seemed to have appeared as if out of thin air since the jet had landed, demanding answers, orders, and/or time off, not necessarily in that order.

Finally breaking free of the crowd, Truman turned back to them and shouted, "Everybody, _back to work_! I'll straighten out individual assignments later!" Without pausing to leave any sort of room for questions, he spun back around on his heel and stormed into his office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the walls.

After a moment, once the crowd had begun to disperse, he cracked the door open again. "Bolt, my office, now."

Shackley followed him inside, a faint smirk playing off his lips. "I took the liberty of forwarding all those calls to your office phone, sir," he said, closing the door behind him.

Truman sank into his chair and buried his head in his hands. "Bolt, I swear, sometimes I think you're trying to kill me."

"I've also started writing the address to the press you're going to have to make." He paused, then added, "Unless you'd like to write it yourself, sir."

Truman sighed, sat up a little straighter, and began shuffling all the mounds of paperwork that had taken up semi-permanent residence on his desk. "No, by all means--we could probably use some nice Canadian politeness for that." He tried to stare down one particularly menacing-looking pile of paperwork before giving up, glancing around the room. "Where's Lili?"

Bolt shrugged. "Off terrorizing Agent Murphy, last I saw."

"Oh. Well, so long as she's around and staying out of trouble..." He looked down at the phone and the blinking "call waiting" button. "Tell her to stop by sometime, will you? Soon?"

"Yessir." After a moment, Bolt added, a little hesitantly, "Ah, from what I understand, sir, Agent Delgado is rather known for his temper, and you've kept both him and the other branch agencies waiting for quite some time..."

Truman waved him off with a defeated-sounding sigh. "I know. Believe me, I know." Still, he stared at the phone for a few moments before he finally hit the speakerphone and took the first call.

"Truman Zanotto speaking...what can I do for you, Bruno?"

To his surprise, however, the voice on the other end of the line was not that of the harsh, often overbearing head of their South American branch, but rather a calm, upbeat--and very familiar--woman's voice. "Oh, there you are, darling. I was starting to get worried!"

He blinked and looked up at Bolt, who merely shrugged his broad shoulders. "Agent Vodello?"

"Yes...Agent Delgado asked me to step in for him; he had to go and psi-blast something. You know how Bruno is when he's kept waiting too long."

Truman chuckled. "I guess I do. It's good to hear your voice, Milla."

"It's good to hear yours too, darling," she answered quietly. Truman thought her accent seemed to have grown a little thicker since she'd returned to Brazil. Silence fell over the line before she added, just as quietly, "I only wish it were under better circumstances."

"Yeah." Truman rubbed his temples, wincing. "Believe me when I say I've devoted as much of the agency's resources as possible to finding Razputin and getting him back safely. He's our--he's _my _top priority; you know that."

"_I _know that, but you know Bruno doesn't. He's been ranting all morning since we found out...something about 'reckless incompetency.'"

He smiled grimly. "I'm not surprised. I don't suppose you'd be willing to smooth things over a little? You know, convince Delgado we're not a lost cause up here--as a personal favor?"

"Actually--" Truman winced, even though Milla's voice stayed relatively calm-- "Bruno and I were both thinking it might be a good idea if we sent a few agents to up there to pitch in. Between rescuing Razputin and finding Nicholas, the agency must be stretched awfully thin. A helping hand or two might be just what you need."

Truman's head settled, with a small _thump_, on his desk. _Yes, that's exactly how it starts, isn't it? _he thought, lifting his head to give the phone a small glare. _First they get their foot in the door, then the next thing you know they're sitting in your chair. _

"Truman? Are you still there?"

He sighed. "Yeah. Look, Milla, it's nice of you to offer, but I think we've got things well enough under control here. Besides, it's a long flight..." He looked at Bolt, who disappeared for a few minutes and then returned carrying an open laptop.

His overly large fingers stumbled over the keyboard more than once as he ran a few searches. "Fastest flight's about twelve hours," he said finally.

"You see?" Truman asked, running a hand through his hair. "By the time any agents made it up here, we'd already be halfway to the deadline Nick set--" he and Bolt both flinched at his poor word choice-- "and we're planning on having Razputin back by then. So you can thank Bruno for the offer, but we'll be able to hold our own up here."

A pause. "Would it change your mind if I told you I'd already volunteered for the mission?"

"I...look, Milla, you know I respect you; you're..." Seeing Bolt trying to catch his attention out of the corner of his eye, he trailed off. "Hold on a second." He put the phone on mute. "What is it?"

Bolt nodded to the phone. "With all due respect, we could use her help, sir. She _was _one of our top agents...and besides, she was instrumental in finding Harper six years ago. She has valuable field experience most of our other agents are lacking. And even if we rescue Agent Aquato before she arrives, well, she can still help us find Harper." Then, indicating the laptop, "I can have her on that flight in just a few minutes and she could be here by late tonight."

Truman took a few minutes to consider his options before he took the phone off mute. "Offer accepted, Agent Vodello." He smiled faintly. "We'll be seeing you again soon."

"Fabulous!" Truman just could imagine the bright, bubbling smile that was no doubt overtaking her face, lighting up her green eyes. "I need to let Bruno know--goodbye, darling!"

The phone hung up with a faint click, followed moments later by a long dialtone. Truman looked at Bolt. "I'll leave it to you to work out all the travel arrangements."

"I assumed as much, sir." Bolt collected the laptop and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Truman, meanwhile, turned back to the phone and the still-blinking call waiting button. "Let's see...London was next, wasn't it? Or maybe it was Nairobi...dammit."

* * *

It wasn't until several hours later that Truman finally managed to escape his office and the barrage of angry phone calls demanding either an explanation or his head--or sometimes, if he was lucky, both. He made his way through relatively empty, quiet hallways, delegating authority as he went. After a quick stop into the infirmary to check on Kowalski--the doctor on duty there had just given him a clean bill of health and was ushering him out the door--before he tracked down Sasha.

He found him locked in his lab with a small, rather eclectic group of agents, including Agent Oleander, most of whom were hovering over a row of television monitors someone had dragged in. Nick's would-be ransom video was playing on all of them, although each screen had it paused, rewinding, or playing at different points.

When no one acknowledged his entrance right away, Truman cleared his throat, attracting their attention. "This the anti-kidnapping team you put together, Nein?" He surveyed the group again, taking note of particularly familiar faces and nodding every so often.

"Minus Agents Quigley, Harmon, and Arthate, who've been dispatched back to the airport, yes." Sasha glanced up briefly from the computer he'd been bending over, then returned to work.

Truman nodded. "Good team." Then, to Agent Oleander--who seemed to be ignoring him rather pointedly, "Morry...how'd Moscow treat you?"

Oleander frowned, straightening his helmet. After a moment, it slid off to one side again, much to his chagrin. "Well, if you forget about that first year in Siberia and the time I was attacked by a giant bear, and if you ignore the frostbite, fine."

"Good, good." Then, turning back to Sasha again, "Found anything?"

Sasha shook his head. "We've already searched the truck twice without results. The airport security tapes yielded little; we have the kidnapping on tape, but no ID on the kidnapper as yet." He frowned. "It wasn't Harper himself--"

"Which means he's got a power base going already," Truman finished, matching Sasha's frown. "Let me know when you get a positive ID. Anything else?"

"Not yet. We're expecting word back from Quigley's team soon as to whether or not they've found any traces of a psychic signal at the airport."

Truman nodded again. Then he motioned towards the door. "I want regular updates. And Nein, I need to talk to you for a minute. Outside."

Sasha pried himself away from his work somewhat reluctantly, following Truman out into the still-empty hallway. The door slid shut behind them with a faint _hiss_. "Sir, what's--"

"We're getting some outside help," he said, his jaw automatically clenching at the thought of the earlier phone calls. Sasha noted the sudden tension with a slight frown, but Truman didn't give him a chance to comment on it, continuing, "From the South American branch--Agent Vodello talked me into letting her fly up here to lend a hand."

Sasha appeared to have gone absolutely rigid, his normally calm, blank expression even more blank than usual. "Milla?" he asked, voice quiet. "Why is she--she has to realize she would arrive much too late to do anything."

"Yeah, but I couldn't talk her out of it." Truman smiled. "You know how she is with kids, especially Razputin. Did you expect her to stay put when she found out about this?"

"I expected her to stay where she'd transferred," Sasha answered. He reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, only to remember they were back in the lab. "Sir, this is absurd; my team is perfectly capable--"

Truman cut him off with a shake of his head. "If I hadn't accepted her offer, Agent Delgado would've just sent someone else, someone who _doesn't _have any ties of loyalty to us. This is the best solution for everyone."

Just as Sasha started saying something about his begging to differ, Truman continued, "Except you and her. Yeah, I know. But she's already on her way here, so there's nothing we can do about it now. I'll give her her own team of agents if it comes to that--but I'm hoping you'll at least think about playing nice."

Sasha had to consider this for more than a few moments, arms folded tightly across his chest and his face drawn taut and unsmiling. Finally, he nodded. "Yes, sir. There shouldn't be any problem."

"Good!" He clapped Sasha hard on the shoulder, nearly sending him sprawling into the wall. "I don't know what the hell happened between you two three years ago, but--"

"That's a private matter between myself and Agent Vodello," Sasha muttered, even as he regained his balance and dusted off his coat. "It's not something that needs to be discussed."

Truman sighed. "Yeah, that's what you both said the first time. So long as it doesn't interfere with the case, I suppose I'm willing to let it--"

Kowalski careened around the corner just then, colliding with Sasha with a screech of shoes on recently waxed tile. The two agents bounced off one another rather spectacularly, Sasha flying into the wall with a sharp _thud_ and Kowalski ending up almost taking Truman down to the floor with him.

"Dammit, Louis--!" Sasha and Truman exchanged a glance when they realized they'd both said the same thing at the exact same time.

"Sorry, sirs!" Kowalski scrambled to his feet, nearly fell down again, and then finally regained his balance in time to try and help Sasha back off his heels. Sasha waved him aside with a stern, unforgiving frown.

Kowalski cleared his throat, looking back to Truman. "I, uh...Agent Shackley sent me to tell you, sir. Razputin's awake. We've got--" he checked his watch-- "we've got until 1:32PM tomorrow to find him."

* * *

(1) Once again, with credit due to M. Tullius Cicero, whom Nick is obviously rather fond of quoting. I'm not sure where exactly this quote comes from in all Cicero's writings and speeches and whatnot, so I can't give you the exact source...or the original Latin. Sorry.

(2) Yes, "Bubba Shot The Jukebox" is a real song. It's by Mark Chesnutt. There are some things I just can't make up, people.


End file.
